In 1980 Tony DiMillo purchased The Newport and opened his floating restaurant in December 1982. One of the largest such restaurants in the country, the vessel is 206 feet long, has a beam of 65 feet, weighs 701 tons, and has a horsepower steam engine. Its original rudder weighed approximately one and a half tons and was removed in dry dock at Bath Iron Works to install a new hull. Commissioned in 1941 as The New York, it ran as a car ferry between New Castle, Delaware, and Pennsville, New Jersey. Renamed The Norfolk in 1951, it ran between Norfolk and Hampton, Virginia. Renamed The Newport in 1958, it ran between Newport and Jamestown, Rhode Island. In 1969 it served as housing for a youth center art colony in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. In 1977 it was purchased by the Setauket Yacht Club of Port Jefferson, New York, before Tony DiMillo bought it in 1980.